How Young is Too Young?

Creator Age Limits...

Often times people are criticized for overlooking younger candidates for job
positions and the like. I have often been a loud, stubborn supporter for allowing
younger people in the work place. As I sit here writing this article, I remind
myself that the ideals I support in my work environment, are (as they should be)
different from what I expect on my mud.

Trick picture, old and young woman.

By definition, the creator channel is where the creators can discuss player issues, policy,
and coding issues among their peers. In reality, creators form friendships with each other
and just as with normal talker channels, their personality, and experiences shine through.
How often have you waited up late at night, to see how another creators date went? Or
vented your feelings about an in real life issue on the creator channel? The channel would seem stuffy
otherwise. Would you really not earmuff a coding-only talker channel? Bah, I would!

Currently our creator channel has an age span (to my knowledge) from preteens to the
mid-fifties. Now, it has been said that creators do not want to talk about anything but
code, drugs, alcohol and sex, and honestly, this does make up the majority
of conversations that take place on the creator channel. I'm definitely not complaining.
Until recently, the younger creators we had were in their later teens, and could handle,
if not contribute to the conversations. However, our latest batch of young creators
have protested to some of our conversations content, going so far as to use the age old
"My virgin ears!!" to silence us. These protests have mostly fallen on deaf ears;
older creators enjoy the atmosphere of the creator channel and are not about to stop because
we now have adolescent members among us.

Should older creators curb their conversations out of respect to the younger creators?
Maybe we should have any creators under the age of 18 on a separate creator channel that
everyone listens to? Would that be unfair to the younger creators? Should we even care
about how our actions affect others in a virtual world? I think we should. The players
who seem have the most disciplinary issues are often the ones who forget that it is not
just a game, it is a community, and everyone there is a real person, with real emotions.

The most nerve-rattling issue, to me, are the pointless monologues our younger members
seem to engage in. When I log in, one of the first things I do is to check the creator
channel history. Too often I'm finding the last 30 creator tells were all from the same
person; not asking for coding help and not really seeming to be connected in any fashion.
If you read through each one, you get the impression that this person is bored, and just
talking to see if anyone will answer. Unfortunately, most of our creators are busy people,
and do not want to engage in idle chatter all day long. This is not to say we do not go off
on odd tangents, however, if you just sent three tells to the channel, and no one answered,
would you not send a direct tell to the person you are trying to get the attention of? As
expected, when an older creator does finally join in, they usually indirectly insult the
younger creator, with a sweeter-than-honey insult, leaving the younger creator knowing they
were just insulted, but not quite sure how.

I seem to have exhausted my brain cell for the evening; I will have to continue this next
month. Until then, I will continue using shock aversion therapy on our younger creators
in order to avoid conflict. Hopefully, I will not have to revert to the stronger method of
partial frontal lobotomies and hallucinogenic drugs for the desired effect.